Renee Rabinowitz

Rabinowitz was born in Belgium and fled the Nazi occupation with her family in 1941.[1] She received an Orthodox religious education in New York and continued to observe an Orthodox way of life as an adult.[1][2]

Both of her husbands were rabbis. Her first marriage ended in divorce in 1986, and her second husband died about three years before the lawsuit was reported in 2016.[2] One of her grandchildren was reported to be Haredi.[1][2]

Rabinowitz earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology and worked as a lawyer; by 2016, news reports described her as retired.[1][2] About a decade before the lawsuit, she moved from the United States to Israel and settled in Jerusalem.[1][2]

In December 2015, Rabinowitz boarded El Al Flight 028 from Newark to Tel Aviv.[1][2] She had settled into her assigned business-class aisle seat when an ultra-Orthodox man assigned to the adjacent window seat refused to sit next to a woman.[1][2] A flight attendant offered Rabinowitz a seat nearer first class, and she moved.[5][3]

She did not contest the request during the flight. After landing, she remained aboard because knee problems required her to wait for a wheelchair; she also used a cane.[5][1] When the pilot emerged from the cabin, she asked why the airline permitted the practice. Rabinowitz later said the pilot attributed it to the board of directors rather than the cabin staff, which she understood as an institutional policy.[5]

Several weeks after the flight, Rabinowitz told Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), about the incident. IRAC represented her in the discrimination claim and sought NIS 50,000 in compensation, arguing that she had felt pressured to move and that a request based on sex was inherently degrading.[2]

Rabinowitz said her motivation extended beyond personal compensation. "For me this is not personal. It is intellectual, ideological and legal," she said.[2] She also asked, "Here is an older, educated woman who has traveled the world, and some guy can decide I shouldn't sit next to him. Why?"[1] She said publicizing the case mattered because the practice harmed women's dignity and should not recur.[1]

In June 2017, Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Dana Cohen-Lekach accepted the settlement between Rabinowitz and El Al.[3][4] The court held that a crew member must not ask a passenger to move from an assigned seat because another passenger did not wish to sit beside that person on account of sex, describing such a request as a violation of the law against discrimination in products and services.[3][4]

The settlement required El Al to clarify the policy to employees in writing within 45 days and provide in-person instruction within six months. Rabinowitz was awarded NIS 6,500.[3][4]

Rabinowitz said she was happy with the result and hoped El Al would take it seriously.[3] She emphasized the practical change she hoped to see: a future flight attendant telling a man who demanded that a woman move that the law prevented it.[3][4] Describing herself as an Orthodox religious woman, she added, "My message to women in Israel is when they encounter an extremist religious ruling like this, they should each fight it in their own way."[3]

Rabinowitz's public statements distinguished her Orthodox observance from demands that she viewed as coercive in shared public spaces. "The idea of having a Haredi population is wonderful, as long as they don't tell me what to do," she said.[2] She argued that the seat-change practice implicated women's dignity rather than only her personal comfort and linked the litigation to preventing similar incidents.[1][4]

Rabinowitz and El Al differed over how the request had been presented. Rabinowitz said she felt pressured and argued that asking a woman to move for a man's religious objection was degrading.[1][2] El Al said the attendant asked politely and sensitively, offered what appeared to be a better seat, and made clear that Rabinowitz was not required to move. The airline also said she changed seats without objecting and offered her a $200 voucher for a future flight.[1]